


The Truth Untold

by Yleisnotonfire



Series: Sudden inspiration [7]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternative Universe - Kingdom, Angst, Angst and Feels, How Do I Tag, I'm Bad At Summaries, I'm Bad At Tagging, Inspired by Music, King!Jihoon, Lee Jihoon | Woozi-centric, Legends, M/M, Platonic Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi/Lee Jihoon | Woozi, Thief!Soonyoung
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 08:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16572902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yleisnotonfire/pseuds/Yleisnotonfire
Summary: I once heard the story of a King whose heart was of ice.He didn't want to love and flowers were the only thing that could melt his heart. Until a thief came into his life and stole his heart along with his roses...





	The Truth Untold

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! I'm here again with another one-shot edited by my self and based on a song.  
> This is the second story based on The Truth Untold. However, this one is mostly based on the Italian legend that inspired the song, but the lyrics helped too. I'll leave the link to check out the legend in the ending notes!  
> I hope you'll enjoy it!

Once upon a time, in a far far away land, there lived a prince whose name was Jihoon.  
He was of a very young age and he was loved a lot by his family, brought up in a joyful ambience, showered with love.

His father ruled over an almost perfect kingdom.  
The king was a kind man who loved his subjects and he had always done everything he could to make them happy. He gifted them an evergreen land that was full of plants and lands to cultivate all year long, so that nobody could suffer from famine and full of flowers so that his people could get happy just because of their beauty and their sweet scent.

Of course, there were a lot of ups and downs as in every self-respecting kingdom. However, the subjects really loved their king and so did his family. The king was so sure that once his precious son would’ve sat on the throne, he would’ve received that same treatment. His son was a lovely child who took the best traits from his father. He was kind, generous, intelligent and most of all, he loved smiling. He would’ve become the best successor.

 

Things, however, never went as the king wished.

 

The king died by the hand of his own wife.  
The queen had poisoned him.

Jihoon’s mother, the woman that he and his father had always loved and treasured, had killed the king.

He was only 12 when she had gone insane and wanted to be the ruler because, according to her, it was her right. Her place was on the throne and she was the rightful queen of that kingdom. Not even her son deserved to sit in that place, so she wanted to kill him too.

However, Jihoon found out her plans so, without any mercy for the woman who brought him to life, ordered the guards to take that woman who claimed to be her mother, bring her to the dungeon and leave her rotting in prison. Moreover, he ordered that not a word about the real cause of his father’s death had to be spoken. He wanted his people to know that their kind-hearted king had died peacefully, not because of some wicked woman.

The queen tried to change his mind, tried to _“make him think”_ as she liked to say. While trying to persuade his son, she succeeded in escaping the guards. The woman quickly took the first thing she saw and used it as a weapon to threaten the guards. It was a refined ceramic vase, one Jihoon remembers a Chinese craftsman gifted his father as a way to thank him for his generosity.

As soon as the guards started approaching her, she didn’t think twice about it and threw the vase towards his son, that precious living being who she gave birth to.

Prince Jihoon, out of reflexes, brought his armoured arm up to cover his face. The vase broke against the armour, shards flew in every direction and some of them reached his face, disfiguring part of it.  
The wounds were deep enough to leave scars that wouldn’t go away. The painful memories of that day would have always been brought with him on his face. They would’ve always been there to remember him that, in the end, love, in any of its forms, is a lie.

 

 

 

 

 

After that day, Jihoon became the King but with him on the throne, a lot of things changed.

The first thing to change was the kingdom.

A long time ago, his kind father asked for help to a great and powerful wizard. The king wanted his people to live in prosperity so he asked him to make his lands always green and fertile so that no drought could have made his kingdom suffer from famine.

Jihoon met with that wizard and asked him to break the spell. The wizard tried to persuade him to do that, but he failed.

  
The kingdom fell into an everlasting winter.  
Lands were always covered with thick layers of snow and ice. There was no break to the snowstorms. His people suffered a lot because of the coldness and because they didn’t know what to do to survive as farming was impossible in that weather. The flowers his father loved so much, couldn’t bloom as easily as they did before and couldn’t adorn and brighten the city with their colours.

All of this, however, didn’t matter to Jihoon.

No one had ever really cared about him so why did he have to care about them?

This was the second thing to change and perhaps the scariest.  
The once bright and energetic boy was nowhere to be found. He had disappeared and replaced with a man, scarred, hurt and incapable of trusting other people. He was always on the lookout, watching his back, fearing to end up like his father. The king had been stupid, trusting anyone thinking that they wanted the best for him and his kingdom. Look at how it ended: killed by the person he trusted the most. He trusted her to the point of marrying her and let her be by his side for what it was supposed to be forever. Jihoon promised himself that he won’t do the same mistake because he has learned that in life the only person he could rely on was himself.

Jihoon was broken inside, unable to give and get love. His heart was basically an indestructible piece of ice, full of scars given by the people who kept trying to get to him but ended up disappointing him. The scars on his heart were the same he bore on his face.

All these events, all these changes, made citizens know him as the Ice King.  
His people and all those who lived at the court lived in fear. They were scared of doing something that could upset the king and making him vent his rage against them. Useless information, a vase slightly moved from its original place, a misplaced fork. Everything could make him, inexplicably, ramp and rage.  
He would vent that anger on the people around him and then he fled to his favourite place in that lonely castle.

_The garden._

That garden was Jihoon’s shelter. It was the only place in which he could feel free, he could be himself and feel safe as he was far away from those wicked eyes who inspected and judged every move of his and, above all, his face due to his scars.

The garden was _his_ place and nobody was allowed in.  
He was so jealous of it and the precious flowers kept in there, those flowers which he really treasured as they reminded him of his beloved father.

Roses, cyclamens, orchids, hortensias, peonies and every kind of flower that existed in this world. The garden was so colourful, a great contrast with his black soul, and he loved taking care of it. One can say that it was the only thing that could melt a little bit his frozen heart, the only thing that was precious to him, his only gem.

Flowers, fragile beings able to give so much joy to someone when they bloom even though they’re bound to wither just a few days after.  

 

Jihoon has often compared his life to the one of a flower. There were so many things in which they could be similar.

They slowly grow up thanks to someone’s care and love. They bloom in all their beauty and, with their bright colours, they give happiness to whoever looks at them. Then, the petals start falling one by one and, because of that, they are thrown away. They are left by themselves, abandoned until they wither and die together with their colours.

The same thing has happened to Jihoon.

His family brought him up with love. When he was a little boy he made his family so happy with his smiles and his existence alone. However, he was thrown away the moment he came to be useless to the purposes of the woman who was supposed to be the only person in this world that would've unconditionally loved him. Since then, he was dead. His colours had disappeared and he had become the person he was now.

These similarities are those who made him love his flowers and his garden which he had always cared about as they were his most precious and valuable treasure.

 

Though one morning, while he was walking in his garden, Jihoon noticed something strange.

It was as if some of his flowers were missing.

He had rushed to his guards who were at the entrance of the garden and then he had run to those who were in the palace to ask them if someone had entered his garden without his permission. The guards let him know that nobody could have trespassed as they had been there the entire time and nobody had walked before them.

Jihoon tried to believe them but something felt off. Someone had definitely come into his garden.

After some sleepless nights, he decided not to think about it. Maybe he had just imagined it.

 

However, day by day, what he thought was just imagination, became reality.

His flowers were really missing, but his guards kept telling him that they hadn’t seen anybody around.

 

_“Nobody comes here but me, so why do my flowers keep disappearing? Someone has been stealing them, that’s the only reason. I need to find out how.”_

Jihoon had been repeating those words for days, trying to find out something that could resolve his problem, something effective that could help him catch the thief and kill him without mercy. He has been stealing from the King’s garden for god’s sake.

 

One night, while he was pacing around his royal bedroom, he was suddenly enlightened.

He would wait for the thief in his garden to come, in the area where his flowers were mostly stolen.

 

Jihoon really did that.

He hid behind a bush near his lovely white roses. He had enough supplies to stay there and wait for the thief.

He waited and waited even more but the thief wasn’t showing up.

One day, two days, three days went by but no one came into the garden.

_“Maybe the thief knows that I am waiting or maybe gave up on the idea of stealing from my palace after coming to know the things I could do to those who steal from me.”_

 

On the fourth day, the Ice King was about to give up on his mission of catching the criminal. That’s when he saw a silhouette getting closer. This person had a long black cloak whose hood hid most of the face. The thief had jumped over the castle walls and roamed around the garden, unbothered, slowly approaching the roses and starting stealing how many as it could be possible, paying attention not to touch their thorns. Red roses, blue, yellow, orange but most of all white roses. The ones the King liked the most.

Jihoon stayed hidden, trying to find the right moment to run and catch the thief.

 

Suddenly, the wind blows making the hood fall off from the criminal’s head.

 

The King freezes.  
He had always thought that the thief was a man who was looking for trouble, however, it wasn’t. Not so tall, hair which almost resembled the snow in softness and colour. His face was a little bit round and puff, tiredness visible in the expression he wore on his face. His slanted eyes were dark, without any light in them, dead. His hands shook a bit while he picked the flowers almost automatically in the way he always had plucked them, or that’s what the king thought.

 

Jihoon couldn’t move at all, he couldn't get himself to stop him. He could only watch the boy while he kept stealing his roses and then, again, he could only watch his back while he ran away before getting caught by the guards. He looked at him getting closer to the wall, throwing the roses to the other side to nimbly use the wooden structure of the rose garden to climb the wall and jump over.

He was now gone, as suddenly and silently as he came in.

Jihoon got out of his spot and ran his fingers through his hair in a mix of rage and disappointment in himself.  
He didn’t know what happened to him, he couldn't seem to understand how his strong determination in catching the thief came to crush the moment he saw him.

He couldn’t catch him or rather he didn’t want to, however, his pride wouldn’t ever let him say out loud that he decided to let him go and make him bring with himself the most precious thing to him in this world. His only companions.

There was something in him that caught Jihoon's interest. Maybe it was the same soulless eyes he saw every time he looked at himself in the mirror. Eyes that used to shine so bright, eyes that belonged to someone who gave his all, who loved a lot but in the end got betrayed. Eyes belonging to someone who stopped believing in the things other people said, eyes of a boy who can only rely upon himself to survive in this wicked world.

Yes, it was because of that kind of eyes.

 

That night, for the first since his father had died, he felt less lonely.  
Now, he knew that in the world, or at least in his kingdom, there was someone that could understand him.  
They may have different backgrounds, experiences, reasons but both came to know what pain is, pain in two of the worst forms: love and loneliness.

  


Time went by.

  
Days, weeks, months passed with Jihoon still watching the boy stealing his flowers. He would come to the castle in the same way, taking away the same flowers. Then, for a couple of days, he wouldn’t be seen in the garden.  
Once he didn’t come for an entire week and Jihoon wondered why. Did someone catch him walking stealthily around the castle before climbing its walls? Did the guards roaming around the streets found him with the King’s flowers in his hands? Did something happen to him? Did he fell sick?

Questions, questions and more question to which he couldn’t get an answer. He found himself feeling anxious, wanting to see that boy again.

The fear of never seeing him again disappeared the moment Jihoon had caught him in the garden, looking healthy. He was relieved nothing had happened to him but then he scolded himself. He shouldn’t feel like that. That boy was a thief after all, taking away what he liked the most like everyone had always done to him.

 

But Jihoon couldn’t help it.

He took an interest in that boy, even though he wouldn’t admit it to himself.  
He wanted to make his mind shut up because every day it flooded him with thoughts about him.

After he returned, he wanted to talk to him. He wondered what would happen if he approached him and tried talking to him. Would he have stayed? Would he ran away and never came back? The latter made him shiver a bit in fear.

However, Jihoon could never do that. He could never take the first step, make the first move, be the one to approach him. He didn’t know how to do all of that. Plus, his disfigured face didn’t make things easier.  
He never felt the urge of talking to someone if not to give people orders or discuss which strategy was the best to conquer that place or defend his kingdom. He forgot how to start a conversation which wasn’t related to how to rule the kingdom and how to successfully resolve court problems. He hadn’t had a friend in years, he couldn’t trust people, he couldn’t let them know his secrets, his fears, his true self. He grew up alone, walls built around his frozen heart.

 

But that same frozen heart was slowly melting now, because of that mysterious thief.

  


Another month had passed by when, one day, Jihoon had an idea.

  
Curiosity had been eating him up.  
He wanted to know why that boy had to steal from him and most of all, he wanted to find an answer to the two questions that sometimes couldn’t make him sleep at night.

_‘What’s his name?’_

_‘Does he even have a place to go?’_

The King knew nothing about him if not that it’s been a while since he saw the boy using his garden as a hideout.  
He would find a hiding spot in that big garden of his, next to the white roses, and he would cry for hours before stealing those flowers who had been watching him shedding tears and then he would leave the garden as if nothing had happened, as if he wasn’t crumbling down until a while before.

It was a sight that somewhat made the King’s heart ache. He wanted to do something, to comfort him. He wanted to get closer and ask him what was bothering him to the point of tears.

He wanted to find out a lot of things about the boy.

To do that, he had to leave the castle and so he did.

However, Jihoon couldn’t show his face around. He hadn’t been around for years but people still knew his face, made recognisable by the scars he bore on it. If he carelessly roamed around the town, people would’ve stopped him to ask favours for their families or insult him for how he has been behaving, ignoring everyone and not allowing a single person near him. He didn’t want that. He just wanted to follow the boy because maybe, if he found something about him, his interest would go down or things could’ve changed in a better way.

The Ice King wore a long cloak with a hood and waited in the garden for the thief. As soon as he stole the flowers and turned his back to him, he wore his white mask and followed.

While on the streets, he tried not to get noticed by him and the citizens.

The King learnt that the boy was well known around the capital.

Everybody seemed to like him as they greeted him, smiled at him and someone even gave a little gift to him. The boy did the same. He kindly greeted and smiled at everyone who approached him. He had a kind word for every person he met; he played with the children and petted the stray dogs promising them to get back to feed them. He had a pure heart and smile which warmed the Ice King.

He looked at his bright smile and wanted to see more of it, he found himself wanting to be the cause of it. He wanted to know how he would feel like if that smile was for just for him to see, if the warmth that the boy made him feel just by looking at him from afar could be even stronger because of his smile.

 

He kept following him and he was exhausted as they’ve gone through half of the town.  
Jihoon was about to give up and go back to the castle when the boy stopped in front of a wooden barrow. There was a woman who was arranging the various flowers on the barrow, plucking away the already withering petals. There was also a man who was taking money from an old lady who held in her hands a bouquet of beautiful white roses. _His roses_. Jihoon could recognise them anywhere.

As soon as the old lady was gone, the boy approached the man. It was as if the boy had been knowing the man for quite a long time as they seemed to be joking about something, moreover, he looked at him as a father would do with his son. Jihoon couldn’t hear a word between the two but he saw the boy handing the flowers to the man who in exchange gave him a bag from which he pulled out some gold coins.

Everything was clear to the King now.

The boy stole his flowers in order to sell them to this man with the wooden barrow. Finally, an answer that, however, brought up even more questions. Why did he have to steal and sell the flowers?

Jihoon could say that he wasn’t evil, he wasn’t stealing because he liked to do that. Maybe it was the only thing he could do to survive, he hadn’t a choice.

The King sighed.  
At this point, he was glad he never stopped the boy. He was glad he stayed there, watching him, trying to understand without jumping to conclusions. He would have ruined the life of a boy who, like him, was only struggling to survive in this cruel, lonely world.

Deciding he had nothing else to do there, Jihoon started making his way back to the castle.

He walked and wondered why he had to do that.  
Did he do that for his family? Did he even have any family left? How much money did he make with ordinary flowers like that?  
He couldn’t be getting a lot from white roses that looked too ordinary compared to the other colourful flowers.

That’s when it hit him.

Maybe he couldn’t approach him and offer his help but he could do something else.

 

He had always been good with flowers and wanted more of them, so his father taught him how to breed new species, how to create a new kind of beauty. That’s why he decided he would breed a new flower, as beautiful as the boy, so that he could take it and make more money as the flower would’ve been of a rare beauty, just like him. This way he could live a better life, without having the fear of starving.

Jihoon was determined to do that, do something that, for once, wasn’t for himself. For the first time in a while, he was his old self, the one who put others’ happiness before his. It didn’t matter if the boy would never come back to his garden to steal, it didn’t matter if he would never see him again. As long as he was happy, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do, even letting him go.

 

Since that day, the King has spent weeks in his room making hybrids of different kinds of flowers just to create the perfect one. It took hundreds of tries and fails but here it is, the Smeraldo, a flower whose beauty couldn’t be described with words of this world as they weren’t enough.

  
The flower’s name was linked to a precious gem as the boy came to be the most valuable treasure the Kings had. Its external petals took the shape of a star as his smile was as bright as the stars, while the core resembled a rose, the flowers they both liked the most. Its colours were the purest: light blue at the centre to symbolise his apparent calm state that hid his sadness, his loneliness; then the colour fades into lavender that represented the grace with which he climbed and fled away every time, the grace that somehow got to his heart; the last colour, the one that coloured the points of the petals, was the prettiest shade of purple who stood as a symbol of Jihoon’s royalty, the boy’s nobility and as a symbol of transformation. The latter represented how the King slowly came back to his old self because of him, how, thanks to a thief who in reality was just a boy struggling to survive, he came to love again.

 

He made hundreds of those flowers and put them in his garden, next to their roses. Then he waited there.  
Jihoon waited for him to come as he wanted to see how he’d react at the sight of those rare flowers, made just for him.

 

One day passed, he didn’t come.

Two days, still no sign of him.

Three days, the flowers were still there.

A week, Jihoon started getting anxious.

A month, he never came back to the castle.

 

Jihoon didn’t want to think that something bad had happened to him. He wanted to believe that his boy didn’t come anymore because maybe he found another garden from which it was easier to steal. He wanted to think that he had found something else to do, that he had lost interest in stealing. He wanted to think that he was somewhere else, smiling because maybe he was with someone who could make him happy and give him the life he deserves to live, something the King couldn’t do due to his personality, his rotten personality, and his fears. He didn’t attract people, he didn’t make them want to stay. He only pushed them away and, maybe, it somewhat happened with him too. Maybe he found him staring, maybe he was scared of his monstruos appearance.

 

However, he was worried as he had never been before. He couldn’t stay any longer in that garden waiting for something that could never come. That’s why he put on his mask again and rushed to the capital.

He ran as fast as he could, a heavy weight on his chest. The feeling that something was off was constant but he didn’t want to pay attention to it. He wanted to believe that he was overreacting.

Jihoon kept running, his feet moving on automatic as they brought him to the wooden barrow where the married couple sold his flowers.

As soon as he spotted the barrow, he slowed down to catch his breath. He approached the man, never lifting his mask, and asked him about the boy who usually came there to sell flowers.

At first, the man didn’t want to speak and when he did, the King wished he never asked.

As soon as the man with teary eyes opened his mouth to answer, he wished for a lot of things.

 

_He wished he never grew that flower._

 

_He wished he never left the castle._

 

_He wished the boy never came to his garden._

 

_He wished he had stopped him the first time._

 

_He wished he never loved him._

 

_He wished his heart to be as cold as ice, again._

 

He wished all of that because the boy was dead. The woman, who had welcomed him in her house as if he was her son, had suddenly kicked him out because he didn’t bring enough money to pay his part of the rent. He had been living on the streets since then but, as the kingdom was in a perpetual winter, he had died from coldness.

 

After hearing that, Jihoon ran back to his castle not caring if he bumped into people, not bothering to give an explanation to the court people who looked at him as if he had gone mad.

He had to run away from people yet again.

He ran to his garden, reaching for his newly born flowers.

He stood in front of them, taking off his mask and throwing it on the floor.  
For the first time in years, he started crying.  
His heart, that was long forgotten is now broken, shattered just like the mask that was lying broken on the floor.

He never shed a tear since his beloved father had died.  
Back then he had cried because he had lost someone he loved.  
This day too, he had lost someone he loved but in a different way, a way that he still couldn’t fully understand.

 

In the end, it was Jihoon's fault his boy had died.

It was because he had been a cruel king who, because of his own scars, wanted the subjects of his kingdom to feel the same way as him. That’s why he brought this permanent winter and that was what killed him. Someone who came to be special for him.

The King cared for his boy, he loved him but he killed him.

Jihoon felt guilty and regretted a lot of things.  
If he had mustered enough courage and faced him, talked to him, would things have ended in a different way? Would he still be alive? Would his heart not ache like this or it would hurt even more?

Jihoon had imagined living the rest of his life with him, bringing the seasons back so they could’ve watched their precious flowers die and live again through every season. They would have enjoyed seeing their little children running around the garden, their daughters making flower crowns to wear at the balls and their sons playing knights or learning about those beautiful and colourful beings that adorned that huge corner of the castle. They would have remembered the days when he was a thief who, together with the white roses, had stolen the King’s heart too. Heart who everybody thought was unable to beat again, to feel something different from hatred, to love  _a person_ again.

However, his castle of dreams he had built for the both of them was breaking down and disappearing, like the broken mask he was still looking at, its small broken pieces flying away with the wind.  
Jihoon would never know if things could’ve gone like he dreamt or if maybe they would’ve gone through another different path.

 

The king couldn’t do anything but cry as love had broken him yet again. It had made him miserable for the second time in his life.

 

 

He cried for days, for years and his heart became even colder to the people who tried to walk in his life.

 

However, he still grew the Smeraldo in his garden, trying to keep his bright boy alive in the colours and the beauty of that flower that resembled him. Strong enough to survive the coldest of winters but pretty and delicate.

Not a day passed without him getting closer to the flowers and caressing with the tips of his cold fingers their petals while thinking about his boy.

He still cried like the first day as he couldn't let the pain go. It’s the only thing, together with the flower, that made him remember that he existed, that he truly loved him.  
He looked at them and softly whispered some words. Words that bore all the things he wasn’t able to say, to do. Words that bore love and desperation.

 

_“I still want you.”_

 

And he kept crying again and again until he had no tear and no strength left to cry.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed it, leave kudos and comments! I like to see how you guys react and, moreover, it helps me improve my writing!
> 
> This is the link to read about the Smeraldo flower and the legend:
> 
> ####  [The Story of Smeraldo - English Translation](http://ktaebwi.tumblr.com/post/164006548707)
> 
> If you want to talk about the fic or be updated for my next work, you can find me on twitter! (@Yleisnotonfire1)
> 
> Thank you so much for spending your time reading this! <3 <3


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